Haunted Theaters

Other than haunted houses and perhaps inns, the next building type most associated with hauntings, and certainly the most romantic are those of haunted theaters. The theater was among the earliest entertainment venues for Americans and even in the wild, untamed West, theaters prospered. From small community and university theatres to Royal theaters and grand opera houses, author Barbara Smith collects nearly 60 accounts of hauntings throughout the United States, Canada, and the UK in the fabulous book. The book provides many first person accounts of specters prowling the catwalks and performers still going on with the show decades after their deaths. Assisting the tales are wonderful photographs, showing many of these theaters in their glory days. Go West, to Tombstone, AZ, sight of the famous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral to visit the Bird Cage Theatre, once frequented by western legends such as the Earp brothers, Doc Holliday, and Wild Bill Hickock where the ruckus of long past poker games can still be heard within its walls. In Toronto, you'll visit the Winter Garden Theatre that closed in 1928. Over fifty years later the theatre is saved from the wrecking ball by a preservation society who plans to renovate the old place. When they open the theatre up for the first time in decades, they find the building literally frozen in time. Set pieces from the last performances are still in place on stage, ticket stubs from patrons litter the floor, and actor's notes are still pinned up in dressing rooms. And it seems as if former patrons, stage hands, and performers have not left either as seats bottoms fold up and elevators move to floors, all on their own. At Chicago's tiny Music Box Theatre opened in 1929, the current staff is very familiar with a ghost named "Whitey" who himself was the manager of the Music Box for some fifty years. Whitey is a helpful spirit, still trying to carry out his duties, so much so that he was given the title of Manager Emeritus. The Ford's Theatre will forever live in infamy as the place where John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Lincoln. When the original theatre collapsed, a warehouse was built in its place in 1894. In 1945 the theatre was rebuilt, and recreated using archival photographs which people swear bore the misty image of Booth in them and even today, people hear phantom footsteps and laughter in the replica theatre. The Old Metropolitan Opera House in NY was known to be home to the famous shade of Madame Frances Alda, a renowned Soprano. When a patron in 1955 complained to the theatre manager about the rude women who was making loud and caustic comments about the performance on stage, the manager told her not to worry, because Madame Alda never stayed past the first act. The woman was sitting next to a ghost! From the Orpheum Theatre in Memphis, to the Bagdad Theater in Portland, Oregon, this wonderful book relates stories of ghosts both frightful and funny. Barbara Smith doesn't attem